The NJ Office of the State Medical Examiner (OSME) is under the Office of the Attorney General, Department of Law & Public Safety and under the immediate supervision of the State Medical Examiner (SME).

The OSME is responsible for the administration and enforcement of State laws and regulations relating to the medical examiner system and medicolegal death investigation in New Jersey. The SME directly supervises the State’s Northern and Southern Regional Medical Examiner Offices (NRMEO and SRMEO), providing medicolegal death investigation services to 7 of the 21 counties, and serves in a general supervisory capacity over the remaining county medical examiners and their offices.

In NJ, a medicolegal death investigation must be conducted by a duly certified medical examiner in all cases of human deaths that occur under circumstances that invoke a public interest for the purpose of public health, public safety and the administration of justice. These cases include all violent deaths whether by homicide, suicide or accident; deaths under suspicious or unusual circumstances; deaths of inmates of State or county institutions; deaths of infants and children under the age of three; and deaths from causes which might constitute a threat to the public health.